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Ed Balls went further than ever before yesterday in taking responsibility for the financial crisis.

The Shadow Chancellor said that he had learnt from his mistakes when asked how he would counter the question the Tories will put at the next general election: “Why hand the keys back to the guy who crashed the car?” In the hope of exploiting coalition tensions before the Budget next week, Mr Balls also promised that an incoming Labour government would scrap David Cameron’s marriage tax allowance.

The £700 million-a-year cost of the measure, which has only lukewarm support from George Osborne and is